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WeirdWho’s Who in ‘The Innocent Man’
By Meghan O'Keefe
@megsokay
Published
Dec. 16, 2018, 9:00 p.m. ET
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The Innocent Man is a gripping look at two awful murders that affected the same small town. Here's your guide to all the major players in the Netflix docuseries.
Photo: Netflix
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John Grisham: The Innocent Man is based upon author John Grisham's sole work of nonfiction. Like the book, the docuseries follows the grisly true crime stories of Debbie Carter and Denise Haraway. Grisham helps set up some of the more complicated parts of the story, and talks about his work as a board member of the Innocence Project in later episodes.
Photo: Netflix
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Debbie Carter: Debra "Debbie" Sue Carter is one of the two murder victims profiled in The Innocent Man. Carter was raped, beaten, and murdered in her own apartment. Later, Ada police arrested Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz for her murder.
Photo: Netflix
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Peggy "Peppy" Carter: Peppy is Debbie's devastated mother. She remembers her daughter and details how her murder caused immense trauma.
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Christy Sheppard: Christy Sheppard is one of the first people we meet in The Innocent Man. She is Debbie Carter's cousin and Glenna's daughter. At first, she exists as another character witness recounting the trial, but later we learn about her activist work on behalf of the wrongfully convicted.
Photo: Netflix
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Glenna Jones: Glenna Jones is Peppy Carter's sister and Debbie's aunt. She not only remembers Debbie fondly, but describes the toll the murder and the trials took on their family.
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Ron Williamson: In the 1980s, Ron Williamson was found guilty of the rape and murder of Debbie Carter. However in 1999, DNA evidence proved that he was not at Carter's apartment, and he was exonerated and freed from prison mere days before his scheduled execution.
Photo: Netflix
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Dennis Fritz: Dennis Fritz was Ron Williamson's friend and was also charged with Debbie Carter's rape and murder. While in jail, Fritz learned about DNA evidence and assembled the paperwork required to appeal his conviction.
Photo: Netflix
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Elizabeth Clinton: Elizabeth Clinton is Dennis Fritz's daughter. She herself is a survivor of violence, as she witnessed her own mother's murder as a toddler.
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Robert Mayer: Before John Grisham wrote The Innocent Man, the leading source on the cases was Robert Mayer's The Dreams of Ada. Here, Mayer gives important details from his own reporting on the cases.
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Denice Haraway: Denice Haraway is the other victim at the center of The Innocent Man. In 1984, she was abducted out of the gas station mart where she worked. Years later her body would be found in a location far from where Tommy Ward falsely claimed she was killed.
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Tommy Ward: This is Tommy Ward as of today, still in prison for the murder of Denice Haraway. Ward has been trying to get his sentencing overturned for decades, on the grounds that he was coerced into giving false testimony.
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Karl Fontenot: Fontenot was also found guilty of the murder of Haraway. We don't see much of him in The Innocent Man outside of vintage footage of his coerced confessions.
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Bill Peterson: Bill Peterson refused to be interviewed for The Innocent Man, but his shadow looms over every episode. He was the District Attorney who pinned Debbie's murder on Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, and Denice's murder on Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. Peterson also refused to accept new evidence.
Photo: Netflix
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Terri Holland: Both the Debbie Carter and the Denise Haraway trials featured scathing testimony from a woman who overheard jailhouse confessions from the alleged murderers. In both cases, this was Terri Holland, aka "the snitch" with a "c-spot" talent. Towards the end of the series, we learn what may have motivated Terri Holland to falsely testify.
Photo: Netflix
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A.C. Shilton: We don't meet investigative reporter A.C. Shilton until Episode 4, but at that point, the plot shifts to her search for Denice Haraway's true killer.
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Glen Gore: Glen Gore was a witness in the Debbie Carter case who claimed that he saw Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz at a bar with Debbie Carter the night she was murdered. Later episodes of The Innocent Man will delve into why the police took Gore's word over others'.
Photo: Netflix
